Maya thought of Daniel’s face, pale and unrecognizable beneath tubes, and felt the weight of a world that had narrowed to a single impossible decision.
Her reply came after a long silence. “If this is the only way,” she said quietly, “then I accept.”
The night that followed stayed with her not as memory but as pressure, a blur of resignation and quiet shame, and when morning light touched the walls of his apartment, she left without a word, finding an envelope waiting on the counter with confirmation that the hospital bills had been paid in full.
She cried in the stairwell, not from relief alone but from the knowledge that survival sometimes demanded a price that could not be refunded.
For two weeks she buried the experience beneath routine, focusing on Daniel’s slow improvement, convincing herself that the past could be sealed off if never acknowledged, until an email summoned her to Victor’s office again, and panic returned with suffocating force.
When she entered, she noticed immediately that something had changed, because Victor did not sit behind his desk but stood near the door, his posture tense in a way she had never seen before.